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The $64M question? When will the feud conclude?

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With thousands of unemployment applications piling up in New Hampshire and Massachusetts unemployment centers, governors of both states have called on Market Basket corporate executives to bring the current stalemate to a close, but wording of the ultimatum from co-CEOs Felicia Thornton and James Gooch could preclude headquarters and warehouse workers as well as truck drivers from receiving jobless benefits.

The notice sent to those workers was that if they did not return to work this past Friday, they would be considered to have “abandoned” their jobs, or quit.

In most cases, workers who quit jobs are not entitled to unemployment, unless it is due to medical issues.

Some labor lawyers, however have said in media reports that non-management workers at headquarters and in the warehouses may be protected during the work stoppage.

“Even though there’s no union in the picture, these employees are withholding their services collectively and that is a strike,” attorney Keith McCown told the Boston Herald.

Meanwhile, the thousands of part-time workers laid off last week throughout the chain including the Rochester store will be able to file as they were officially laid off by the company.

Still, when workers are laid off they must exhaust all annual leave time before collecting benefits. The question is, then, would the company have to pay back benefits to those workers if and when they are called back to work?

With all the implications of sluggish sales at stores adjacent to Market Basket and the other ripple effects of loss of spending by workers who were either laid off or are participating in the job action, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan have pleaded for both sides to end their showdown and bring normalcy back to the two states’ grocery market community.

Other supermarkets like Hannaford and Shaw’s, meanwhile have had to hire new part-time workers to cope with the greater workload and another question now becomes what will happen to them if Market Basket cousins Artie. T. and Arthur S. end their 20-year feud?

Rallies to celebrate the support of customers who have faithfully stayed away were held on Friday in Manchester, N.H., and Tewksbury, Mass., while, in Rochester, Lilac City Taxi has vowed to not even bring fares to the Milton Road plaza that houses Market Basket and several other businesses.

“I tell customers don’t even ask me to take you there. I won’t come into the parking lot past these guys,” said a driver as he smiled over at protesters holding pro-Artie T. signs recently.

The biggest question is, with all the protests and all the signs and all the customers staying away and the company losing millions of dollars, market share, prestige and net worth, why on earth is this silliness still going on.

Frank Hoy, a family business expert and professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, summed it up in a recent quote in the Boston media much the way we did more than a week ago.

“The logic is the customers matter hugely, (but) if logic were at play, they wouldn’t be in the trouble they’re in now,” Hoy told the Boston Herald. “Each party, they don’t want to win, they want the other party to lose.”

So the $64 million dollar questions – and that figure is appropriate because that is probably how much the company has lost in the past month – is When will the feud conclude?

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